Things to do in London this weekend (August 1-2)

Somerset House has hosted fashion shows, ice rinks, open-air gigs and cinema in its Fountain Court, but never stand-up comedy, until now. Now the courtyard plays host to five days of non-stop punchlines as Laughterama touches down for the first time, bringing seven shows and a stacked line-up of British comedy talents you’ll recognise from the telly. Wednesday’s opener sees Taskmaster champion Sam Campbell and chaos merchant Ross Noble share a bill with Bridget Christie. Meanwhile, Thursday belongs to Josh Widdicombe and Rosie Jones. Dara Ó Briain and ventriloquist Nina Conti headline Friday, before a weekend of double-show days featuring basically everyone you’ve ever seen on a panel show in the last five years: Sara Pascoe, Phil Wang, Fern Brady, Ania Magliano, Catherine Bohart, Tom Allen, Nick Mohammed, Ed Gamble and Tim Key.

Dulwich Picture Gallery's big summer exhibition will be an intriguing contrast with the pastoral landscapes found in its permanent collection. Portrait of a City is all about American urban life, as documented by photographers between 1907 and 2012. It'll offer a fascinating insight into how big cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco grew from low-rise communities into towering assemblages of skyscrapers and multi-lane traffic. Photos from big names including Diane Arbus, Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange will chart the faces and sights of cities in flux.

Founded during the Arab Spring in 2011, Shubbak festival has become one of London’s largest celebrations of contemporary Arab and South West Asian & North African (SWANA) culture, spotlighting performances, exhibitions and community-driven events. To mark its 15-year anniversary, the organisers have curated this free museum late at the V&A. Featuring 12 artists, the one-night celebration will be exploring how we use our bodies through DJ sets drawing on wedding anthems from Sudan, the Sahel and the Horn of Africa by Basma, performances from brothers Hasan and Rami Nakhleh who are originally from the occupied Golan Heights, installations illuminating fashion, culture and community through the perspective of an Arab bride, as well as films, poetry and sensory experiences. 

Kumori is a classy place. It feels more like an expensive spa than a restaurant. Like Bao – and 1990s bookies – you’re handed a tick-box menu, and that’s when the true theatre begins. Nominally a handroll bar (but there’s some torched nigiri and various sides, too), at Kumori you can opt for a set menu of three to five handrolls, or choose your own adventure with an a la carte option. Whatever you do, make sure you order spicy tuna wrapped in Kumori’s custom- made nori and placed on perfectly seasoned rice and laced with surprise crunchy bits. It is divine. If you’re looking for a fast-but-meticulous Soho spot, Kumori might be your new go-to. 

You don’t have to venture all the way up to Edinburgh for a cracking dose of comedy in August. Every year, The Roundhouse curates a line-up full of the biggest stars on the circuit. Across 18 days this year, you can expect gigs from the likes of Joe Lycett, Ed Gamble, Katherine Ryan, Sam Campbell, Ed Gamble, Sara Pascoe and Vittorio Angelone. Beyond the stand-ups, there’ll be live podcast recordings, theatrical comedy and interactive shows to watch too.

In a world where adolescence is so often reduced to doomscrolling, six-sevens and brainrot, debut director Imran Perretta’s tender coming-of-age drama puts forward a strong case that children today are still capable of feeling deeply. Co-writers Perretta and playwright Enda Walsh take us to Luton. The town’s unkempt woodlands make the perfect playground for 12-year-old friends, Ish (Farhan Hasnat) and Maram (Yahya Kitana). Their tiny frames already bear adult struggles. For Ish, it’s the loss of his mother; for Maram, who is of Palestinian descent, it’s the conflict in Gaza, leaving him convinced the ‘war is coming’. Childhood should be a refuge from the world's ugliness, but Ish understands how little protection it offers when racial profiling, grief and distant conflicts all arrive on your doorstep at once.

A post-war story set at an all-girls boarding school in Cornwall, Malory Towers could be stuffy and staid. Yet watching Emma Rice’s musical take on Blyton’s books (first staged in 2019, now playing amongst the faded glamour of Alexandra Palace as part of a UK tour), you become utterly caught up in and charmed by this world. This is thanks to a hyper-talented cast of actor-musos, who take Rice’s oftentimes simple script and imbue it with life. Yes, there are the obligatory hockey sticks and hijinks, but they’re mere accoutrements to the good old-fashioned storytelling on display. It’s a lively production, driven forwards by an impressive ensemble and sure to prompt a certain borrowed nostalgia for times gone by. 

It’s not hard to see why American musical theatre powerhouse Ben Platt was attracted to the British debut of Mark Sonnenblick’s 2018 off-Broadway show. A two-hander, it’s a great vehicle for his talents as a singer and actor. But there’s more to this funny, sad and wistful piece – directed here by David Cromer. It’s New York, 1965, and Platt is Trevor, the singing half of a performing and romantic duo, alongside songwriter Arthur (Gregor Milne). It’s an era when being gay is a threat to life and livelihood. We are Trevor’s audience in smoky Greenwich Village club the Never Get as he tells – and sings – the story of their turbulent relationship and contrasting careers. He’s simultaneously charismatic and achingly vulnerable, sending a gorgeous shiver through every song or landing a wisecrack with a practised twinkle.

Canada Water’s dockside is packed with (free!) cultural goings-on this summer. As part of the new Round the Dock festival, there’s something going on every single day. Get down to the docks on a Tuesday evening, and you’ll get to enjoy a spoken word and live music session from Spit Nights Poetry. On Wednesdays, feed your curiosity at a talk from pub lecture series Pints of Knowledge or on Thursdays, perfect your steps at the salsa nights with Timba Britanica. South London Afro-punk collection Steam Down has curated a programme of acts to take over the floating stage every Friday. At the same time, each Saturday and Sunday will see live jazz and soul performances from the likes of Mark Kavuma, Sophie Faith and Soul Sanctuary Gospel. That’s all on top of dozens of food stalls, loads of family-friendly workshops, a programme of outdoor film screenings and rotating flea markets and craft fairs. 

What a deliciously lubricious spectacle Matthew Bourne’s ‘auto-erotic thriller’ ‘The Car Man’ is. Created in 2000, this dirty mash-up of Bizet’s ‘Carmen’ and film noir classic ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’ has to be one of his strongest works. A grubby garage-diner in the ironically named, tiny Midwestern town of Harmony is the setting for this charged, Bard-tinged tale of lust, murder, lies and retribution; here, owner Dino is trying to keep order among swaggering mechanics more interested in brawling and impressing their flouncing floozies. Bourne’s ‘Car Man’ is tuned to perfection. 

Battersea Power Station is adding a free summer funfair to its entertainment offering. Electric Summer is an entire seaside town’s worth of things crammed onto a Thames-side patch of concrete. The centrepiece is a full roller rink with sessions ranging from wobbly first-timers to Thursday date nights. Out on the jetty, pétanque courts turn the riverside into a passable stand-in for the south of France, river views included. There’s also a big wheel for skyline views, dodgems, a wave swinger and boardwalk games including Lobster Pot and Blockbuster.

The world’s oldest psychiatric hospital, Bethlem Royal Hospital, often referred to as Bedlam, looked after several famous patients, including Victorian painter Richard Dadd. Dadd, a former Royal Academy of Schools student and established painter, suffered from delusions whilst on a Middle Eastern tour in 1843, believing the Egyptian god Osiris was influencing him. On his return home, Dadd, convinced his father was the devil, ended up killing him with a knife before fleeing to France. First detained at Bethlem and later moved to Broadmoor Hospital, where he died, he produced some of his most celebrated works, like ‘The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke' whilst incarcerated. This survey exhibition includes more than 100 works, including rarely seen sketches and paintings and a series of watercolours made on his eastern travels. 

Once again, London’s most ravey festival will take over Boston Manor Park with some of the biggest names in techno and house. Celebrating its 10th birthday this year, Junction 2 will span a mega two weekends with an absolutely stacked line-up featuring the godmothers and godfathers of electronic music alongside exciting contemporary talent. For the second weekend, ravers will be treated to sets from I Hate Models, Trikk, Supergloss, Lammer and Marceldune, among many others. 

Homer’s The Odyssey first engaged Christopher Nolan when he was attached to direct Troy, 20-odd years ago, and he’s been stealth-adapting Western literature’s foundational text ever since. Interstellar puts a time-bending spin on the story of a man trying to make it home; Inception is about trauma and homecoming; and The Dark Knight Rises sends Batman into the underworld to find his way home. So maybe The Odyssey has been the British filmmaker’s real odyssey all along. It’s a movie he could only make at this point in his career, with the full array of tools and treasure at his disposal. It’s definitely Nolan at his most formidable. The ending, one of his very best. The thunderous near-three-hours of storm-tossed seas, clashing steel, vengeful dei ex machina, awe-inspiring monsters, and Oscar-bound A-listers takes unpacking and a second viewing will bring some of the themes and textures into sharper relief. Appreciation will only grow for Ludwig Göransson’s extraordinary expressionist score, the apocalyptic glow of van Hoytema’s nocturnal lighting, and Ellen Mirojnick’s opulent costumes. The results are mythical. 

Alfresco swimming season has officially arrived. To celebrate, Royal Victoria Docks is opening its open-water lido daily over three weeks for Summer Splash. And while other open water swimming can often come with a price tag, this watery oasis is free to use throughout the event. The lifeguard-supervised swimming spot also features sandpits, deckchairs and sunsafe areas to relax in. Head along to lane swim with a backdrop of stunning city views or look out for a programme of family-friendly activities. 

Director Simon Stone’s expansive adaptation of the Greek legend The Oresteia is trashy as hell and yet relentlessly gripping, its three-and-a-half hours whizzing by. The original story starts with one of the most infamous murders in myth, as Agamemnon sacrifices his own daughter Iphigenia to the gods in order to allow the vengeful Greeks to sail to Troy. Here, a non-linear structure maximises shock value in a way that clearly takes a leaf or two from the world of true crime podcasts. It’s Greek myth gone Saltburn, and incredibly fun. 

Another year, another spectacular line-up of classical music. This year, the orchestral extravaganza will feature 86 concerts across eight weeks, with over 3,000 artists taking to the stage, with the majority of the action taking place inside the grand surroundings of London’s Royal Albert Hall. There'll be the chance to hear visiting ensembles from all over the world, including The Met Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Mahler Academy Orchestra and the Spanish National Orchestra, as well as innumerable concerts and recitals from the classical music world's biggest stars. This weekend, look out for Omer Meir Wellber and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen perform symphonies by Haydn and Schumann, and Proms favourites Nicholas Collon and the Aurora Orchestra playing Mahler’s First Symphony. 

With admirable chutzpah, London’s latest immersive exhibition offers not just a focus on a single event, but a journey through the entire history of human civilisation. Well, ‘entire’ is a bit much: rather than focus on heavily documented eras of humanity, Timewalk – a creation of the DEM Museums in Türkiye – is dedicated to using immersive tech to plunge you into a succession of semi-mythical ancient civilisations. Starting at Göbeklitepe in Türkiye – widely recognised as the world’s earliest communal gathering site – its various rooms will take you onward to Babylon, Ancient Egypt, the Maya, and Rapa Nui and more, with the idea being to present these vanished societies not as dusty relics but as living, breathing recreations of how they might have been.

After pulling in millions of visitors in Amsterdam and Barcelona, Moco Museum London has landed beside Marble Arch with a three-floor showcase of modern, contemporary and immersive art. Inside, you’ll find more than 100 works from names including Banksy, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Yayoi Kusama, alongside immersive digital rooms and sensory installations designed to pull you into the artwork. There’s also the limited-run exhibition ‘Voice of the Street’, dedicated to Haring’s legendary New York subway drawings from the early 1980s. Flex-entry tickets start from £15, so you can drop in whenever suits during opening hours.

Get over 40% off tickets, only through Time Out Offers

It’s difficult to talk about Ana Mendieta’s work without first mentioning her death. The Cuban-American artist was just 36 years old when she died in suspicious circumstances in 1985, after allegedly falling from the 34th-floor Manhattan apartment she shared with her husband, the revered modernist sculptor Carl Andre. As a rising star of the avant-garde art scene in 1980s New York, there’s no knowing what brilliant work Ana Mendieta might still be producing if her career hadn’t been cut tragically short. Great news, then, that the Tate Modern is putting the art front and centre this summer, in the largest UK exhibition of Ana Mendieta’s work to date, featuring many pieces never exhibited in this country before. 

Edmond Rostan’s French classic is anything but stuffy in this RSC transfer. Co-adaptors Simon Evans (who also directs) and Debris Stevenson restore the work to 1640 France – a time when the country was stuck in the Thirty Years’ War – and yes, it comes with all the trimmings of that era (pocket swords! Mournful violin players!). It’s very much the romantic tragicomedy Rostand wrote, but despite its period setting, it feels wholly current. Adrien Lester’s Cyrano appears as a man of swaggering confidence and Susannah Fielding’s Roxane is sardonically chipper, with girl-next-door energy. It all makes for a five-star play, oozing with bittersweet longing and stirring down to its last jot. 

Visit the first museum exhibition dedicated to artist Audrey Amiss, which brings together drawings, paintings and other exhibition materials to explore the life and work of Amiss who died in 2013. Committed to psychiatric hospitals several times throughout her life, Amiss used her art to advocate for people who were mistreated by the mental health system. The Surviving Exhibitions focuses on works that records suggest Amiss exhibited or intended to make public. 

Journalists have been banned from entering Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023. In Daniel Rugo’s new documentary, a group of international medics act as first-hand witnesses to the conflict. ‘You’re not seeing what I’m seeing,’ is the documentary’s opening gambit, delivered by the straight-talking Dr Victoria Rose, a British plastic and reconstructive surgeon. With the absence of international media on the ground in Gaza, Rugo claims that what most people are learning about Israel’s action in Gaza are ‘lies’. Filmed from October 2023 to 2025, the 10 physicians featured, which includes surgeons, paediatricians and obstetricians, are here to set their record straight. It’s not a happy watch, but Life Support is an urgent and essential piece of reportage. 

Tate Modern has sold more advance tickets for Frida Kahlo: The Making of an Icon than for any exhibition in the Tate gallery’s 128-year history. It’s not surprising. More than seventy years after her death at the age of 47, the Mexican artist remains a cultural phenomenon: a painter, fashion muse, feminist icon and, as the gift shop attests, a patron saint of tote bags and tea towels.This exhibition explores how Kahlo became one of the most recognisable artists of the 20th century and a source of inspiration for generations of artists who followed. The highlight is by far the first rooms, which feature 23 exquisite paintings and 11 works on paper by Kahlo. They are accompanied by photographs she sat for, her jewellery, and a selection of Indigenous Mexican clothing from Kahlo’s wardrobe. 

This nail-bitingly tense thriller is director Felix Barrett’s second ‘normal’ piece of theatre to open in London in the last year. Barrett is the founder and driving force behind immersive theatre legends Punchdrunk. The Guilty concerns a troubled police call centre operator; it’s writer Chloe Moss’s adaptation of the Danish film Den Skyldige and its Jake Gyllenhaal-starring Hollywood remake. This production is about as immersive as sitting in a seat watching a single guy onstage gets. The action is enhanced by an arsenal of disorienting light and sound tricks. Russell Tovey wears his heart on his sleeve tremendously well as Joe, a jaded police call centre operator going about his job with surly efficiency. There are hints from the beginning that something bad has happened to Tovey’s operator. Barrett’s direction provides an alluring air of ambiguity, but at the same time it’s mostly a bloody good real-time thriller. 

Popping up each summer on the steps where the Regent’s Canal passes Granary Square, Everyman’s Screen on the Canal is one of the city’s best loved outdoor cinemas, thanks to its atmospheric setting, eclectic programming and the fact that it doesn’t cost viewers a penny. Pop down on a sunny afternoon to catch live coverage from Wimbledon every day of the tournament, plus the usual mix of live sports, classic movies, family-friendly flicks and recent hits.

If you thought walking up to your favourite painting in the National Gallery was as close as you could get to a masterpiece, think again. At Frameless, 42 masterpieces from 29 of the world’s most iconic artists are presented in ways never seen before, reimagined through cutting-edge technology, animation and soundscapes. Situated in Marble Arch, Frameless plays host to four unique galleries with hypnotic visuals and a dazzling score, where visitiors can enjoy 90 minutes of surreal artwork from Bosch, Dalí and more, for just £23.60.

Save 20% on tickets, only through Time Out Offers 

‘What you are about to see is something you’ve never seen before,’ we're promised at the start of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. That may be true for some of us, but not for all: Nirvanna the Band the Show was actually a culty and beloved Canadian sitcom based on an early aughts web series – which has now, as advertised, been turned into a full-length movie. Like the series and sitcom, the movie follows two clueless friends determined to book a gig at Toronto’s famed Rivoli music club. Unfortunately, they don’t have a manager, an agent or much of a setlist. Because the movie’s on-the-fly style is as scruffy as its protagonists, it’s easy to underestimate the intelligence and artistry it takes to make something so silly. But they dumb themselves down brilliantly. And right about now, a brilliantly big-hearted, feel-good comedy may be even more valuable than a Saturday night spot at the Rivoli.

Is it art, or is it maths? It’s a question even MC Escher himself couldn’t answer about his own work. While the Dutch printmaker known for his infinite staircases, metamorphosing tessellations and paradoxical buildings was rejected by the art world, he was revered by mathematicians and is now one of the most famous optical illusionists of all time. The OG creator of images that make you go ‘Huh?’ is going under the microscope in London with a blockbuster exhibition celebrating his life and work this summer. Created by Italian company Arthemisia and the immersive peeps at Fever, MC Escher: The Exhibition has arrived at Somerset House as part of its world tour. If you are a gaga for geometry, are fascinated by fractals, or just have a penchant for the psychedelic, you will find plenty to be engrossed by here.